Thanks for coming to my blog. I'm Danny Thompson, a Computer Information Technology student and a writer. I live in Winter Park, Florida with my wonderful girlfriend, Nancy Deutsch. We have three dogs, lots of hot sunshine, and a few hurricanes.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

...and God Laughs

I'll try to give you at least a picture a day, even if it's just a picture of me that day. Aren't I just the cutest thing?

For the past ten years, I've used the information and guildlines in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as a tool. I've used it to try to be a good person. In that, I've done, well....pretty good. I can always do better. But, I've also tried to use it to be competent, dependable. In that, I've not done well.

In the book First things First: To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy,by Roger and Rebecca Merrill and Stephen Covey (First things First is Habit 2 of the 7 Habits), they talk about the urgency addiction. How people in organization get themselves caught up in things that are important and urgent, and leave the things that are important but not urgent behind -like fitness, family, rest. That's all well and good, if you're a Type A. I'm not. Type A's get into that, Quadrant 1 focus. Not me. I'm a Type B guy. Quadrant 4, all the way dude.

They didn't write a book for people like me. My friend, Josh Miller, and I use to sit on the porch (there's your first type b indication) and talk about that. We like our leisure, maybe just a bit too much. Josh likes his cars. I like my tech. Guess both are technically tech. The hard part for me is the get-up-and-go.

What has worked for me? Planning. When I stick to using a planning system, I get a lot done. This summer, I did pretty good at first, especially when I started my business. I could ge so much done, it surprised me. But, as time wore on, I started slacking. I fell back to my old, Quadrant 4 activites, especially useless internet browsing. Then again, my useless browsing has paid off when I started writing and publishing.

Today, I spent most of the day getting Microsoft Outlook's Mail system to work right. One of the chapters in our class is on Outlook, and I wanted to be prepared to learn it. I have a few mail email addresses, but I use my bodycoach2@yahoo.com as my primary address. It's supposed to work with Outlook, but I had trouble setting that up, and I didn't really want to in the first place. Maybe why I had trouble. My bodycoach2@hotmail.com address worked perfect. Now, I can use Outlook's mail for my hotmail account. Not that I really will.

Once I finished that, I installed FranklinCovey Plan Plus for Outlook. Plan Plus adds much of the Seven Habits planning concepts into the Outlook program. Personally, I think it has a few more versions to go before they get it right, but it works for now. Before, I used my own method: I made a MS Word file, and used that as a "compass" for the week, and did the planning with regular-old Outlook. I'm hoping the Plan Plus system help me do planning better.

I do better with training, eating, and even sleeping when I plan it out. Still, there's that saying;

"People plan, and God laughs." Well, let's hope he helps, and laughs only a little.